two flew over the cuckoo's clock

seriously - where the hell is kent getting all these blog post titles from?

now we’re getting into some foresty goodness.

it was taking us such little time to get across the countryside we made sure we stuck to the smaller roads. even so, we still made it to our destination by lunch!

but along the way we stumbled on a little town called simonswald. it sat beside a little stream, mountains on either side, snow way up on the peaks, pine forest running down most of the slopes and in the valley between, a town full of giant timber frame houses.

we’ve been noticing lots of flags out, hanging between buildings across the road, and frankly, we love. it’s amazing what a few patches of coloured fabric, dangling from string, can do to the feel of a place.

we’re pretty sure the flaggery is all in honour of the ‘fastnet’ festival. basically, all the villagers in this region come out to celebrate the end of winter by dressing up as witches and clowns and freakingly horrific nightmare beings, and then parading around town, drinking lots of bier and wein and being merry. i believe this (or some of the characters they portray) is to 'scare' away winter. from weaving through towns, it seems that each town has their own fasnet character, distinguished by costume, mask, colours, accessories (such as a bell on stick, a flagon of beir etc etc). they are plastered on the walls through posters, creepy mannequins hanging from windows and some towns have a permanent statue in their main square too.

unfortunately, it’s next week, so we miss it. but we see all the preparations going on, and it is equal parts intriguing and terrifying. some of the clown costumes are seriously scaring me. most likely due to the fact that the towns are all devastatingly quiet, yet there are constant trickles of locals wandering around in costumes fit for characters of where the wild things are. yesterday we saw a witch with her face painted entirely black, black robes, black hat, and a massive red balloon sculpture bobbing on top of said hat ... huh? there is some awesomely freaky shit going on in the south.

(we’ve heard there’s some sort of carnival event in berlin next week, which i’m assuming is related in some way, so we’re planning to get our freak on at that shindig, costumes and all!)

so Freiburg is freaking awesome. We arrived in stellar time and found our hotel 3 hours early. We went in to see if we could dump our car and go walking, and not only got directed to our car spot, but offered a choice of two different rooms. Fuck yeah! I was filling out the registration thingy, and it had a section for me to fill out my ‘wife’s’ details. I made some joke to kent about him being my wife, and the manager said “oh! You are, how do you say, new married?” and we’re all like, “ya!” and she’s all like, “eeeh, honeymoon or whatever?!” and we’re all like “ya ya!” and she’s all like “let me see if I have a bigger room, yes yes, you can have this if you like, it is big and with … how do you say … this room is only room with … bath? You can look if you like, might not be ready yet though, sorry sorry.” So we go to the top floor to this amazing massive room complete with shaggy shagpile carpet and a bathroom the size of our last hotel room. We go “fuck YEAH dunk-a-SHERN!” (oh. my. god. we totally scored. seriously, wall to wall shag carpet, in fact, slightly up the walls too (this shagpile carpet also climbs up the bed), plus a sofa, dining table, a study nook, sunset views. killer.) anyways, we goes off for a walk, finding cute streets, awesome little cafes, and a general vibe of goodness (aaah, what is it about university towns?), and when we eventually arrive back out our room, not only is it clean and lovely (or wundershone), there is a gorgeous little welcome table, complete with champagne, fresh fruit, a fresh flower and berliners (wee jam donuts.) And as I sat back on the couch (because this room has a table and chairs and another desk and chair and a couch) sipping my free champagne while eating donughty goodness, I think “aaah. This is good.”

lots of jumping up and down (again) ensued.

And what, you might ask, are your heros doing with such an indulgent room situation? Yep, we transformed the bathroom into an uber laundry production line. Armed with what we hope is laundry soap, a bath and a portable washing line (thank you thank you mum, you were right!) we have filled our giantess of a bathroom with soggy socks and undies. Aaaah bless.

A night out on the town, where cocktails are the size of my head and cost a third of what they do in melbourne, and a large salad is actually the size of a small wagon. (yep, a long island iced tea, with 6 different types of alcoholic shots – no kidding, it had tequila, vodka, rum, triple sec… and I forget, some other potent spirits – and cost about $8 australian. i’m drinking pints of great german beer for $3.50 a glass.) Perfect location for kent and I to invent a new game, german charades, where I read out a phrase in german, attempt to give clues through my fabulous expressions and kent guesses what it is in English.

My favourite so far was my attempt to convey:

“ich habe verstopfung!!” (I am constipated)

kent’s guess was “I am disappointed?”

Or

“wir haben es sehr eilig” (we’re in a great hurry)

kent: “I have large speed necessity???”

it seems that each time we learn a new German phrase or word, we lose a few English ones. It possibly doesn't help that my phrasebook was written in 1986 and second edition published in 1992. We must sound like total fuckwits most of the time.

Breakfast. Is. Heaven. We walk in, see a buffet of coldcuts, cheese, yoghurt and so on and go “ooooooh-wee!” and then round the corner to see the buffet is twice as long again filled with waffles, berliners, breads, cereals, museli, fruit, juice. “damn!” then a gorgeous frauline appears “Mochten sie ein kaffee, tea, cappuccino …” phwaor! By the time I figure out what to ask for, and return to my table, a little jug of coffee is waiting for me, practically singing “hello lucy! I am here to make your day! Kiss kiss kiss!” About halfway thorough my feast of joy, I go “hey kent, there is a bain marie over there.” Which happens to be filled with bacon and eggs. (ps – the ‘bacon’ is actually cooked proscuitto! i am going to have a heart attack here, surely. especially with the 4 varieties of cheese for breaky, including blue vein!, and several varieties of salami. meat sweats, here i come.)

Kent got the meat sweats this morning. Must have finally hit the limit of how much cholesterol you can ingest in one week. I'm still going strong.

So long as you look past the fact that every hotel breakfast area we have visited in the last few days is filled with pictures and figurines of CLOWNS, everything is quite perfect (even the doughnut stand had weener clowns sitting in it. I had to move one aside with the tongs. shudder.) Prima!!

Deustchland, sehr erfreut!

(Germany, glad to know you!)

weird, the cocktails didn't seem that strong.

Now, all I have to do is work on my rabbit in headlights expression each time a local speaks directly to me. There is only so many times you can respond with “er … das ist gut, ya?”

tomorrow? we'll show you the castles we found. oooh-wee!!

just like a snow dome, only slippery

if only the camera could capture how snowy this really is. well, i mean, obviously this is really snowy, cuz you can see, but in this pic it is ALSO currently snowing ... a LOT. a lot a lot.

view out of our hostel window in the morning...

uh oh - that's our car under there !

we got out ok, thank goodness for snow tyres and the true genius of skill that is my driving, coupled with the insurmountable intuitive and perceptual clarity of my navigator. i kid you not, we were driving in a full on white out. if such a thing exists. if you recall our interactive art experience in denmark, this was so very similar, only in a car, with endless space surrounding. looking to the left and right, all you could see was white space, and about 3 metres in front, trees would just appear, guiding you through the roads. AMAZING!!!


you know that it is really foggy (such as the above pic) and really white out-y with snow (above the above pic) when your eyes start attempting to invent perceptive space with those little floater worm thingies in your peripheral vision. crazy.

little stop on our way through the black forest – villingen

apologies for the slightly too darkness of this pic - but oh look at the turret!!!

enid blyton eat your heart out.

a lot of these buildings had awesome scale/feather-like turrets, roofs and even walls. you may have gathered by our pics by now that this area has some pretty awesome looking houses, but oh my. these ones were killer. all of them had their own little personality. the tiles were little and patchy, of all different colours.

an old, walled city, built some time during the renaissance, like much of europe, it would seem.

it took us no time at all to zip from the southern alps, across the ‘bottom’ of germany, and into the black forest. maybe 2 hours and you’re across about a third of the country. the autobahns help, of course. but it was quite snowy so i could only crank it up to 152km/h at my fastest bit.

still – pretty good!

about half was on good road, the rest was normal country roads.

this was our first real attempt at flying by the seat of our pants, as far as accommodation goes. no bookings, just rock up, look around and hope to find a good place.

as with everything so far, the gods are smiling. we did drive around the outside of the town (no cars allowed inside, except for 3 little lanes) about 4 times, as it is one-way traffic flow in a single circle around the town and we had to keep trying to get the right turnoffs. but, we stumbled on a place that fit the bill and - kapow! – we scored a good room, complete with breakfast for a good price. the one catch? place was entirely filled with freaky fucking clown decorations. we thought maybe a party was on that night. no, there was no party. just an empty dark dining hall ... filled with clowns. woot.

for example

i think the flash photography really helps to capture how fucking WEIRD it was.

shudder.

the dude running the joint didn’t speak english, which was a great way for us to try out our stumbly and mumbly deutsch. (seriously, our massive tip for travelling, is to always great people in their language, try to at least start talking to them, but kindly ask if they speak english. so far, this has warmed the locals to us, with kindly smiles and helpful assistance.) there was much merry chuckling from his end, and much cheesy thumbs up and "das ist gut ya!" from our end.

we did all right.

a big room, in a rather ye olde style affair.

overall, villingen was very pretty, very clean and very pleasant.

pretty small, so one afternoon was plenty to get a feel for it.

we did attempt to see what was happening in this small town on a friday night, what with so much vibey-clown-goodtimes. and the result? ghost town. not a soul to be seen, a few shady characters here and there. ba-bow. oh god, i am starting to sound like kent.

breakfast was super awesome. breakfast was ... aaaaah. i cannot even describe.

i’m pretty sure we were the only ones in the joint. we wandered in to the restaurant with its views out over town (the hotel was on a hill just outside the old walls). aside from the creepy clowns everywhere it was all laid out with table settings, maybe about a dozen tables. the old lady came out and blathered on in german about god only knows what, but she plied us with cereals, bread rolls, jams, yoghurts, fruits, several varieties of cold meats, coffee and juice, all with a smile and much rushing about. we totally filled up to the brim, thanked her muchly – lucy read out our gratitude from her german phrase book, which the lady was very pleased about (more cheery chuckling about my retarded pronunciation) - and we hopped into our car, cranked up some nick cave on the stereo, and set out for some serious forest roads into the heart of the schwarzwald (black forest).

worth the fussen

worth all the fussen?!? oh god i didn't write that.

getting into some serious picture perfect deutschland now.

one of the things i was kinda packing my dacks about, was getting a hire car out of munich. driving the car was not a worry. it’s just the first hour, getting the car through city traffic, and out on to the right road.

but we were pretty damned lucky really.

we picked the car up, from the central train station (i know, train station for a hire car venue …) and i was pretty happy with our provision.

i just booked the smallest, crappest little euro box i could get on the internet and, thanks to some sort of blessing from the car god, Fordeus, we got a half-way decent model.

you had to pay like 90 euro for a gps

to which I declared, ‘bugger that’,

but when we got in the car – kapow – it has one built in.

and iphone/ipod capability.

this has made more of a difference than you think –

grinderman, you are our getting caught in the perpetual fog music!

anyway, it’s a small thing, but we gotta drive across a foreign land for a week, in the snow, so such things count for big blessings.

ok, next stop – fussen.

the land of the super-kitschy, neo-gothic monstrosity that is king ludwig’s castle.

this is the castle that walt disney nicked for his logo.

uber-schmaltz!

long story short – turns out it ain’t too bad.

not as kitschy as feared and, thanks to a ridiculously fragile, pint sized, yet cute, teutonic ancestral albino tour guide (insert quote “if yew loook to the riiight. yew will see ludveeg’s telephone … it’s quite niiiice.” – i know! a telephone! in the 1870s!), twas a rather marvellous insight into the european aristocracy’s final throw of the dice before the hellfires of social uprising tore through their ranks and they dwindled down to papperazi fodder for murdoch and his disciples. if you have no idea what kent is on about, don’t worry, neither do i. however, these castles were pretty fucking insane. ludwig’s bedroom alone was a frightful gothic woodcarving delight. also amusing to see tourists rush to the toilet room, which apparently had running water.

it’s completely impossible to capture the full effect of the sublime landscape. the towering mountains are at once sitting off on the other side of the valley while also bearing down from the heavens over your head. seriously mind altering stuff.

so, this ludwig dude, was like a bavarian king. how many kings this continent managed to squeeze into spaces little larger than the municipality of stonnington is somewhat bewildering. nonetheless, they seem to have a king for every 5 square foot of land. no wonder they fought all the time.

so, ludwig.

he was, as all the available imagery of him detests, a rather handsome chap. he, of course, paid for these images, so you have take that with a grain of salt. aside from that, he was great mates with richard wagner, and, importantly, a complete nutbox.

what can a tonne of money and six generations of inbreeding get you, you may well ask. sheer, unadulterated extravagance. so much flamboyance that it takes your entire life to build your house, only, you die before it’s finished coz the builders have to build giant fake grottoes on the 5^th floor, a team of four wood carvers need 4 years to carve out your bed from the finest oak, and a set designer from munich is painting trompe loeill forestry into your personal singing hall. kent does not lie. there is a fake cave in the castle. it is quite amazing. complete with stalactites. it was (almost) worth paying the obscene fee just to see a fake cave on the 5^th floor of a castle.

possibly the best thing about the whole castle tour, was the majesty of the natural environment. ha, just realised that majesty applies to kings and nature, but really, should only ever be applied to the latter.

slow clap for kent.

we managed to stumble into the mountains when the weather was damned near perfect. we had left over snow from recent falls but the sky was crystal clear blue. the air was so silky smooth it transited your larynx and oesaphagus like the gentle breath of angels.

(maybe ludwig’s grandiose pomposity is contagious!)

is anybody else vomiting? because i am.

our room in fussen. all I can say is, don’t worry guys, we did not in fact get murdered. even though the setting suggested we should have. got to the hostel, with a cheery sign saying “if no one is home, just ring this number from the phone outside!” we went inside (no locks) then inside again through a second entrance, and were halfway up a staircase when we thought … heeeh.

kent very abruptly said “ergh you booked it, you call!”

my first real foreign language test.

it was really way more like,

‘ok, sweety, you call, he has your name on the booking…’

lies. all lies.

Phone: “hello?”

Lucy: “eeeeeh hello … !”

Phone: long pause

Lucy: “eeeeeh … main nameh eeest … lucy james (bogan accent) … ehm … sprekken zie english?”

Phone: sighs … then yells “ABDUL!!! *indistinguishable german yelling* “Hello hello yes yes yes hello!”

Lucy: “hi, my name is lucy james, I have a booking for a room, eeeh eine doppelzimmer bitte?”

Phone: “ooooh mmm maybe oooh no no no.”

Lucy: “but I booked it”

Phone: “mmm maybe no, oh maybe I have … drie room”

Lucy: “I’m sorry? I don’t understand”

this goes on for quite some time, we then have to drive to a different building on the other side of town to get our bedroom with twin beds.

“Ah hello yes gutentag yes come in doppelzimmer you have doppelzimmer other guests have twin beds, you double bed all gut! Come come come! Yes your room, your key, yes, fill form, give to me sometime ok gut? Gut? Gut? Ya? Ya! Ok! Bye!” and after several hefty handshakes left us in our poky little penthouse, complete with said double bed, all the cleaning materials still in the bathroom and a fabulous selection of german language hollywood movies on VHS.

i sooo wanted to watch an old alec baldwin movie (in german), but we zonked it after a rather delicious traditional meal in town. wait, we have images…

ok, so lucy ordered ‘pototo dumplings’, yes, pototo.

anyway, it was ONE dumpling. but WHAT a dumpling it was. no doubt its mum was very proud. twas as big as a softball, no kidding. my uber dumpling arrived in a bed of arduino sauce. family members, you know what this is. it was amazing.

i had a rolled roast, drowned in gravy with, of course, the ubiquitous saurkraut. all washed down with a local bier – which all completely kicked ass. actually, literally, next day, it really did. (i think kent's being gross.) looking at that picture, i could so go my mega-dumpling again ... mmm ... gelatinous.

baron von munich

(ya think?)

SNOW !
we finally got ourselves some decent winter whiteness and it's pretty exciting.
well, it was exciting, then it was cold.
and wet.
but at first - it was amazing. and very exotic to us.

this snow is magic. it is constantly falling silently from gigantic conifers, often on our heads, or making a gorgeous little 'foof!' on the ground. and yes, it makes a soundless 'foof!'

we arrived into munich the day after they had -16 degrees overnight temperature.
we had a pretty good flight in, on lufthansa, with great seats and a bit more leg room - which is damned appreciated (kent is endorsing lufthansa now). oh - and the most brilliantly wrong cheese paste bagels anyone could hope for. if they were serving food in heaven, it'd be this stuff, doled out by saints wrapped in dirty bedsheets.

this is probably one of the first incidents in ... ever, that i have opted to not eat at all, rather than put that filthy muck into my body. i am still reeling from watching kent eat not only his own cheese-emulsifier-brick, but also mine. no food should ever make such a heavy 'phump' when dropped on a surface. pure evil.

here's us, all excited to be in a land of snow, outside our hotel in the old city area.
also excited about not being in an airport. we're up to 6 flights completed now and frankly,
over it.

this hotel was amazing. never before have i been to a hotel so smoothly pretending how no-frills it is. i do a slow clap for you hotel-motel-one. my favourite part was the description for the shower: "a mini spa experience, in just 15 minutes you can have your very own spa treatment." i scoffed a lot. and then i had a shower. hotel-motel-one. you were right. the water was hot, the pressure was high, my shoulders were massaged and soothed by the multi-jet shower head and my skin felt soft and supple from my organic citrus body/hair wash. (yep, they jam it all into one tiny bottle.) the room itself was a bed, and AND a 'portable desk' should you want to move it to ... i have no idea where.

everything was delightfully jammed in, sporting new and 'groovy' design. should you require an alarm clock, that's fine! get one at reception (i am quite sure they had about 5 to spread around), just don't ring, because there's no phone! in all seriousness, despite all its midgettyness, this hotel was really nice, and the lack of anything was done with such style. the bar sported a smashing array of 'exclusive gourmet toasts' (ham and cheese toasties with herb paste - they love their pastes in deustchland - with a garnish of 'handpicked' kettle chips [i can only assume they mean the potatoes ... can you pick a potato? does one really go potato picking? i think not.] on the side.) designed by someone famous, and some fantastic cocktail menus (whoever spots the typo first gets a prize):


i chose to stick with wine instead.


so, here's lucy enjoying the snow.
i'm sure we looked like idiots running into the sludgy leftover bits of snow, giggling, kicking up puffs of wet, sloppy pulp, and trying to spritz each other with tiny fingerfuls of snow.
but fuck it. twas fun times.
fun times.

ok, again with my obsession with architecture.
munich is rather, um, posh..ish.
munich-ites are so posh that they sneeze diamond encrusted boogers, that are deftly caught in silken handkerchiefs held by golden dachshunds in tuxes. not that i am convinced they are associated with such a filthy habit as sneezing.
lots of neo-goth and neo-classical and neo-goth/classical.
oh, and PASTEL. buildings are fully lime cream, lemon butter and salmon smear.
there's a million porsches on the streets and lots of old men with walking sticks made of oak, with golden knobs. nice kent.

the sticks have the golden knobs, not the old men.
well, maybe they do, but i didn't ask.
he did, and they do.

the buildings are ridiculously pretty really.

on one of our many strolls through ol' munich town brought us finally out of the posh shops, the pradas, the chanels, the swarovskis, and out of the standard 'every-street-in-the-world' with its h&m, virgin, vodafone, esprit, mcdonalds etc etc..
anyhoo, we found a cool district with some kick ass little designer boutiques,
and almost splurged on some clothes, but wrong sizes greeted us everywhere.
(ps - on clothes, i bought a pair of killer bog-catchers from copenhagen.
you may get to see them in future pics. they rule.)
the above pic, is from a little canal (again with the canals) somewhere close to this nice area.

yay - it's probably silly, but whenever we see a little bit of interesting street art, we get a little bit excited. its almost like some sort or secret code, a sign that advises that somewhere close by there's a bit of subversive arty action going down.

hurray!

next trick -
hire a car, drive out of munich and head to the alps ! ! !

le chateau d'George Clooney

ok.

so there's a bit of catching up to do. one week in samouillan with nath and the family was a 'holiday within a holiday'. much chilling. much coffee, cheese, bread and laughing about farts.
yes, uncivilised as it is, hanging out with your high school buddy brings back the adolescent humour in an instant wave of nostalgia and 'pull my finger' giggling stupidity.

here, we're supposed to be doing some product marketing for christel's shop, photographing some new pendants she is introducing. but really, we're just reverting to childhood.

I'd like to point out that Christel specifically said "I want you to make it look like a girly tea-party" - so naturally the guys get out the storm trooper lego.

most hilarious moment:
concocting a 'gary ribald' drink (one beer, one sugar, one espresso all in one glass) only to have it froth up at an alarming rate, so nath and i dive into our glasses to drink it up, only i laugh too quickly, blowing caffeine coloured beer froth all over the kitchen walls, and, most hilariously, all over nath's face, clothes and beanie. he had beer froth in his eyebrows for about an hour.
major cackfest.
increasingly delirious giggling ensued shortly after we had settled back down to resume our consumption of the wonder beverage and nath pulled the exact same feat, only this time blowing the froth back on his own face.
genius.

no pics for that sequence i'm afraid. video footage would no doubt have found its way on to youtube by now if only we had some!

outside of boyish giggling fits and reminiscences, samouillan was a lovely experience. samouillan is the village that nath and christel and gustav and nina live in. population, about 100. you can see the pyrenees mountains in the distance, all snow capped and tickling the clouds. rolling agricultural lands ebb and flow down valley and up ridges as far as the eye can see. temperatures were a welcoming 8-13 degrees, feeling like spring after 2 weeks of zero degree shock.

these mountains are quite amazing - i kept doing a double take, you almost miss them, and then: kapow! they honestly look unreal. photos don't do them justice i'm afraid! (though your photo is very good kent.)

our lovely host, nathan, enjoying a George Clooney by his front gate.
his apparent state of confusion lifted the instant the caffeine fired its way into his cerebellum.

le maison de gross - the house of the gross family.
a seriously kick ass villa. around 200 years old.

ok, so across the road, framed within the gates of the neighbour's yard - KAPOW!
iced capped peaks of the pyrenees.
awesome.

oh - and this is a better image of the pyrenees.
this is from the town where the kids go to school, aragnac.
killer.

the very congenial and hospitable nathan, with the lovely and joyous wife, roaming the streets of toulouse. toulouse is about 40 mins drive away, the 4th largest city in france and a typical web of cobblestone streets. much of the building is in a pinkish, terracotta colour, which gives the town a distinctive rosy hue.

oh. my. god.
ok, these idiots take the award for the lamest buskers so far.
there's some pretty terrible buskers in europe, seriously terrible. in summer there's a thousand knobs dressed up like statues, just standing there, doing jack shit. one time, i saw a guy dressed as dracula in a coffin. when you got close you could hear him snoring.
talk about a lazy fucking job.
anyway, these numbskulls threw sheets over their heads and clapped their ridiculous little dragon/dinosaur heads non-stop, back and forth, to the tinny beats on their stereo.
truly horrible.
lucy dared me to sneak up behind and kick them - i wish i had the balls, really i do.

i actually NEVER told kent to kick the 'performers.' (maybe to push them over?)

i really love europe. it's got some kick ass shit.
much culture. much architectural joy. much historical reverence.
but, for a democratic republican type from the antipodes, there's way too much religious-based fawning, way too much monarchical worship.
most of it is historical, thankfully, but still. a thousand dukes riding a thousand bronze horses on a thousand marble plinths is boring. those dicks mostly just stole from the poor and war-mongered themselves all over the place.
screw them.
this pic above, however, is the perfect antidote.

one of the most brilliant things about the whole samouillan experience was getting to hang out with nath's kids. gustav is my godson, so that was some important quality time to lay down. he kicked my butt at poker, time and time again. which was not so much fun for the ego, coz he's 8.
anyway, we drew lots, played games - together with his sister nina - and had much cool times.
we played lego once, and i was the bad guys (of course) and i had two drones, named simon and bob. that was cool as. i made voices and tried to catch yoda by pretending to be a cute girl with some luscious sandwiches, so as to lure him from his hiding place behind the couch.
in the end, i cried coz my throat was rasped by my weird british accents.

quotes such as: "yodaaaaaah? would you like a sandwich?" "oh no Simon, it's too late for meeeeeeeee!" "oh gawd man!" "this sandwich really is very good."

but, nonetheless, golden times.
the image above is from a game of exquisite corpse, this time with nina.
we drew some seriously genius art. i should exhibit some of them.
seriously.
genius.

oh - so i better elucidate on the george clooney thing.


well, nath and christel have a lovely coffee machine that makes some pretty good coffee.
it's one of the instant thingy-majiggies but it does crank out some decent coffee.
anyway, the coffee sachets that go into it are made by nescafe. there's this really huge marketing campaign, featuring george clooney, who promotes the product.
every so often, nath has to go into toulouse to buy supplies and he HATES it. it is a super commercial product, with some pretty hardcore marketing going into it.
at the shop, in town, you are greeted by 2 doormen in suits... yep... TWO!
inside, you have a queue of people, lined up, all anxious to get their selection of beautifully packaged, metallic coloured sachets. really, it is a marvellous sight.
you get a free espresso, in store, in the vip section. with a nespresso branded biscotti. was seriously the best part of going into the city. nathan looking all embarrassed and cringy, while kent and i stand with him in the line, cacking ourselves.
no joke.
then you take your highly branded bag out of the shop, to advertise to the world that you are a nespresso groupie.
fun times. fun times.
i had to carry the bag coz nath doesn't like to be seen to be a corporate whore.
kent loved it.
but clearly, he's a bitch.

love ya nath.
i love you george.